Stop buying media, start earning it

Brian Millar

Brian Millar muses on the nature of viral marketing on the internet, and how the media owners can make money from it (answer: with difficulty); and how advertisers can exploit it (answer: with ingenuity).

Stop buying media, start earning it

Brian Millar

Recently News International and Google have been contemplating their purchases of lovely shiny Web 2.0 phenomena, and wondering how they are going to make their money back. And they have a bit of a dilemma. Because the very sites that they have bought have made media abundant – and you should not be able to charge a lot for something that is ubiquitous, no matter how important it might be.

Adam Smith made this point very nicely when he wrote about diamonds and water. Water is important. If you do not get...

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